SELECTIVE SERVICE AND THE GI
After Pearl Harbor, eager young
Americans jammed recruiting offices.
“I wanted to be a hero, let’s face it,”
admitted Roger Tuttrup. “I was havin’
trouble in school. . . . The war’d been
goin’ on for two years. I didn’t wanna
miss it. . . . I was an American. I was
seventeen.”
Even the 5 million who volun-
teered for military service, however,
were not enough to face the challenge
of an all-out war on two global
fronts—Europe and the Pacific. The
Selective Service System expanded the
draft and eventually provided another
10 million soldiers to meet the armed forces’ needs.
The volunteers and draftees reported to military bases around the
country for eight weeks of basic training. In this short period, sea-
soned sergeants did their best to turn raw recruits into disciplined,
battle-ready GIs.
According to Sergeant Debs Myers, however, there was more to
basic training than teaching a recruit how to stand at attention,
march in step, handle a rifle, and follow orders.
A PERSONAL VOICE SERGEANT DEBS MYERS
“ The civilian went before the Army doctors, took off his
clothes, feeling silly; jigged, stooped, squatted, wet into a
bottle; became a soldier. He learned how to sleep in the
mud, tie a knot, kill a man. He learned the ache of loneli-
ness, the ache of exhaustion, the kinship of misery. He
learned that men make the same queasy noises in the
morning, feel the same longings at night; that every man is
alike and that each man is different.
”
—quoted in The GI War: 1941–1945
EXPANDING THE MILITARY
The military’s work force
needs were so great that Army Chief of Staff General
George Marshall pushed for the formation of a Women’s
Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC). “There are innumerable
duties now being performed by soldiers that can be done
better by women,” Marshall said in support of a bill to
establish the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps. Under this
bill, women volunteers would serve in noncombat positions.
Despite opposition from some members of Congress
who scorned the bill as “the silliest piece of legislation” they
had ever seen, the bill establishing the WAAC became law
on May 15, 1942. The law gave the WAACs an official status
and salary but few of the benefits granted to male soldiers.
In July 1943, after thousands of women had enlisted, the
U.S. Army dropped the “auxiliary” status, and granted
WACs full U.S. Army benefits. WACs worked as nurses,
ambulance drivers, radio operators, electricians, and
pilots—nearly every duty not involving direct combat.
The United States in World War II 769
Background
The initials GI
originally stood for
“galvanized iron”
but were later
reinterpreted as
“government
issue,” meaning
uniforms and
supplies. In time,
the abbreviation
came to stand for
American soldiers.
In March 1941, a group of
African-American men in New
York City enlisted in the United
States Army Air Corps. This was
the first time the Army Air
Corps opened its enlistment to
African Americans.
▼
WOMEN IN THE MILITARY
A few weeks after the bill to
establish the Women’s Auxiliary
Army Corps (WAAC) had become
law, Oveta Culp Hobby (shown, far
right), a Texas newspaper execu-
tive and the first director of the
WAAC, put out a call for recruits.
More than 13,000 women
applied on the first day. In all,
some 350,000 women served in
this and other auxiliary branches
during the war.
The WAC remained a separate
unit of the army until 1978 when
male and female forces were
integrated. In 2001, almost
200,000 women served in the
United States armed forces.
